I write horror novels, mostly.
I just don’t call them horror. They’re urban fantasy. They’re supernatural suspense. They’re near-future sci-fi thrillers. But definitely, totally, super-not-horror. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, a finger thrust up before my rubbery latex clown mask where I shush you long, low and slow, shhhhhhhhhh. Don’t worry! Not horror at all.
*squeaks clown nose to comfort you, honk-honk*
Except, psst: they’re totally horror. I don’t even necessarily mean they’re horror as a genre. Horror as a genre is a bullseye on the back of a galloping horse — sure, there are certain tropes and conventions that mark something as horror, but these usually mark it more as a subgenre of horror rather than an overarching convention. Horror, to me, is as much a mood as it is a convergence of tropes or ideas. That mood goes beyond merely invoking fright. It’s about traipsing into the dark, about shining a flickering flashlight beam on some nastiness, and probing fear and discomfort up and down the spectrum. From big stuff (surveillance state, religion, apocalypse) to little stuff (hey guess what there’s a guy in your closet covered in someone else’s skin and he has a camping hatchet covered in blood and hair). I love it. I grew up reading it. I write it. Zer0es is a wet-wired hacker thriller where the surveillance state is so intrusive it might literally be drilled into the back of your skull. Invasive is a fun thrillery Jurassic Park romp ha ha ha oh and did I mention it contains ants who will cut off your skin with their mandibles in order to farm your flesh snippets for delicious fungus? Miriam Black can literally see how you’re going to die, and people get eaten by flocks of birds and there are folks with no eyes and a guy gets chopped up in a garbage disposal. Doesn’t matter that nobody wants to call them horror — the Miriam Black books are horror novels from snoot-to-chute. Exuent will be apocalyptic in its scope, and though I’m sure it’ll be labeled a thriller, it is intentionally meant to be scary, creepy, unsettling in the same way you find The Stand or Swan Song. In other words: It’s horror.
(Okay, no, my Star Wars novels aren’t horror, really. Though they contain scenes of horror — the spiders from Kashyyyk, the Acolytes of the Beyond, and so forth. And the films contain scenes of horror, too: the scary-slasher-masks of the Tusken Raiders, the Wampa attack scene, the seduction of the Dark Side across all the movies and shows.)
It’s not just me. It’s not just my work I’m talking about. Lots of books are horror novels, and don’t really get labeled as such. Jurassic Park is, as noted, a fun thrillery romp, ha ha ha, but yeah, no, that shit is still horror. It’s maybe a sillier variant of horror, but not that silly. (A passage from the book: “Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly own to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick slivery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands.”) Recent novels I’ve read and loved that are clearly horror novels despite not generally being labeled as such:
Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance and Devil’s Rock and Head Full of Ghosts; Sarah Lotz’s The Three and its sequel, Day Four; Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters and The Shining Girls. Jason Arnopp’s Last Days of Jack Sparks is wry and twisted and often creepy as fuck. I don’t know what they called Scott Hawkins’ Library at Mount Char, but to me, it’s horror in the Barker mold — abstract, fantastical, and wonderfully unhinged. The work of Cherie Priest and Christopher Golden and Seanan McGuire is frequently scary as hell. And yet, very little of it earns the horror moniker and is eased quietly into other genres and marketing categories. Fantasy! Urban fantasy! Supernatural suspense! Scary thriller, oooooh!
Is Joe Hill horror? I’ve seen his work discussed as supernatural suspense, but c’mon.
C’mon.
*stares at you like Jim Halpert*
*stares at you like Jim Halpert with cockroaches pouring out of his mouth*
Other books lean into horror, even if they’re not horror novels. Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon has chapters that read like they’re out of a horror novel. Game of Thrones takes on a new dimension when you view it less as epic fantasy and more as epic apocalyptic fiction — a fantasy variant less like Lord of the Rings and more like The Stand. The James S.A. Corey Expanse series frequently puts forward scenes of epic space horror with the advent of the Protomolecule. Again, here horror serving as both a reflection of mood and of its genre trappings, even if it doesn’t ‘take over’ the whole of the narrative.
These are books that, were they given the label of horror, would elevate the genre above the schlock some people believe it to be and give it the credit the genre is really due.
And yet, despite all this, horror really isn’t a thing. You won’t find many bookstores who have horror shelves anymore. (And here I pour a little on the curb for Borders, whose horror shelves were a dark land in which I dwelled often.) Publishers shy away from the label. Agents do, too.
And so do writers, then.
Because, as we’re told, “horror doesn’t sell.”
But that’s fucked. And it’s sad. It’s both fucked and sad because horror is having a moment. Horror is not a genre at the fringe. Walking Dead is arguably the biggest damn show on TV — and it’s about as straight-up nasty-ass horror as it comes. It’s not the only horror on TV, either. Black Mirror? Channel Zero: Candle Cove? The Exorcist?
Horror movies — especially when made with quality and care — cost little to make and tend to bring in bank (The Conjuring, Sinister, Lights Out). Ye cats and fishes, have you seen the trailer for Jordan Peele’s upcoming Get Out? Holy fucking fuck does that look creepy. (And socially relevant, to boot. Jordan Peele, you magnificent bastard.)
Horror comics? Sure, got those, too. Wytches, Afterlife with Archie, Outcast, Nailbiter, Clean Room, No Mercy, and of course, Walking Dead.
That’s all just a sample of what’s out there.
It’s great stuff. It’s astonishing fiction. It forms my diet.
And it’s part of a legacy, too. Stephen King is maybe the only one out there who gets to wear the horror moniker easily and proudly, because he’s so damn good and so damn old-school that if you try to take it away he’ll drag your ass behind the barn to fight you like he’s Uncle Joe Biden. But I grew up reading King, McCammon, Barker, Poppy Z. Brite (who is now Billy Martin, but who holy shit just released a brand new pair of stories, Last Wish & The Gulf under the Brite name), Yvonne Navarro, Caitlin Kiernan, and on and on. And then there are those authors I read who are horror-adjacent: Joe Lansdale, Robin Hobb (sure, the Assassin’s Apprentice series isn’t horror, but c’mon, it’s often horrific), Christopher Moore (funny horror!), Bradley Denton (holy fuck you guys, Blackburn). Consider the horrific dimensions of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
We need to look long into the dark. It’s part of who we are. We like to be scared. It gives us context. It gives us control. It helps us take the horror of the real world and give it shape so that we can conquer it, if only a little. Out of discomfort we find comfort.
I miss the days where I could find a shelf labeled horror. I miss the days where we didn’t shy away from that genre label as if it were a dirty, cheap word. Horror isn’t marginal, not at all, yet we still treat it like it is — like it’s the weird cousin who accidentally got invited to dinner, all the while failing to realize that the weird cousin grew up a long time ago and now runs a successful tech company and makes more money than the rest of us combined. It’s not that the genre isn’t well-represented. Like I said, it is. I just hope we get back to the point where we can call it what it is, loud and proud, with hiss and with shriek, with gibber and wail.
Me, I’ll be over here writing my supernatural suspense, my creepy near-future thrillers, my explorations of dark and urban fantasy. But you and I, we’ll share a little wink and a high-five, because we know what it is I’m really writing, and what it is you’re really reading. Then we’ll clink our butcher knives together and drag the latex masks down over our faces once more so we may resume our hunt for the blood of the innocent.
(Shout out in the comment your favorite horror novels — even if they’re not labeled as such.)
(Or even your favorite scary scenes in otherwise non-horror books!)
jessnevins says:
Horror reprints, of stories that appeared pre-WW2, seem to be received well. Curious that the old stuff is allowed to wear the title of “horror” proudly and not the newer stuff.
October 26, 2016 — 9:52 AM
Sarah DarknStormy (@thefatalimage) says:
Favourite Horror? Through A Glass Darkly (Bill Hussey) and I’ve always had a soft spot for Stephen King’s Needful Things.
October 26, 2016 — 9:56 AM
Nora says:
Well, thanks for the reading list! Goodbye boredom! 🙂
October 26, 2016 — 10:01 AM
Grace says:
Tommyknockers
October 26, 2016 — 10:02 AM
Joshua Allen says:
No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite horror novels.
October 26, 2016 — 10:09 AM
Joshua Allen says:
Besides Stephen King OBVIOUSLY
October 26, 2016 — 10:10 AM
L.S. Johnson says:
Blood Meridian also.
October 26, 2016 — 10:26 AM
terribleminds says:
Nearly anything by Cormac. The Road, anyone?
October 26, 2016 — 10:27 AM
Angela Crawford says:
The Road was phenomenal!! Bleak and Beautiful all at once.
October 26, 2016 — 11:26 AM
Jennifer Loring says:
YESSSS. (And also yes to Blood Meridian. The final paragraph chills my blood.)
October 26, 2016 — 2:06 PM
Deborah Cerrito says:
“…from snoot-to-chute.” LMAO
Btw ,,, I LOVED “Invasive”
October 26, 2016 — 10:11 AM
TSHall says:
As someone who is about to start a horror novel, this is depressing.
October 26, 2016 — 10:13 AM
Peggy A. Wheeler says:
Yet, my problem is the opposite. Would you say a book with a goddamn gruesome cannibalistic monster with maggots crawling out of his eye-socket, shape shifters, ghosts, and witches might be horror? Well according to the owner of a horror bookshop in Los Angeles: “I can’t take your book because a supernatural mystery with horror elements is not horror.” Hahaaa
October 26, 2016 — 10:13 AM
Paul Baxter says:
There’s a potential horror novel in a horror writer being rejected by a horror bookstore for not being horrific enough.
‘So he wants horror, she thought. *I’ll* show him horror, then.’
October 26, 2016 — 10:35 AM
bookbucket says:
I now need this to happen. Someone, please, make this happen.
October 26, 2016 — 5:13 PM
mark walkuski says:
The Necromancer’s House by Christopher Buehlman. Really enjoyed this one. Reread it recently. He has a few other books that are really great, too. I think most people would really dig his work.
October 26, 2016 — 10:20 AM
mitziflyte says:
I understand your angst, Chuck. I also write horror, horror short stories, but I’ve called them dark fantasy. I read horror. I grew up on horror. But that wasn’t considered “right” for a young girl in 50s and 60s. So I was quiet about it…until I was older and Stephen King appeared. I carried The Stand around with me and said, “You gotta read this book!” to everyone.
We write to invoke feelings, love, hate, contentment, and, yes, fright. Feeling frightened is just as valid as feeling love. I just wish TPTB in the “book world” felt that way.
October 26, 2016 — 10:23 AM
samhIAN HIATT (@ihiatt) says:
Ah Chuck…quoting Jurassic Park like that. You’ve made my Wednesday.
October 26, 2016 — 10:26 AM
Amber Fallon says:
Instead of a novel, a comic: Harrow County. Brilliant, beautiful, HORROR.
October 26, 2016 — 10:26 AM
JohnM says:
Was going to suggest that very thing. I completely endorse what she says.
October 26, 2016 — 3:08 PM
Wendy Roberts (@WARoberts14) says:
Gerald’s Game was the last “horror” book I read that gave me the creepers. Which is why I’m excited and nervous to see how that plays out on the big-screen front. Otherwise I love the American Horror Story series. Not all of the seasons have been great, granted but this most recent one.
October 26, 2016 — 10:29 AM
R K says:
Graham Masterton, for some reason, rarely gets mentioned among the horror greats (maybe because his stuff is hard to find in the US) but IMO he’s up near the top. The Manitou, Ritual, Mirror…good stuff, and gory as hell.
October 26, 2016 — 10:33 AM
janinmi says:
Thank you for mentioning Graham Masterton! I haven’t read a lot of his books, which I intend to fix some day. The one that grabbed my brain and hasn’t let go for almost 40 years is The Charnel House. I had to read it for a college course; I started it around 8 p.m. on a Friday and finished it at 3 a.m. the next day. Sleep was impossible until I finished reading it. I hope to find a copy of it some day, to re-read it and find out if it’s still as scary as when I first read it. *shudder*
October 26, 2016 — 1:31 PM
Adrian Walker says:
The Short Story ‘Mute’ by Gene Wolfe. The horror is that I still don’t fully understand it but that, one day, I suddenly will.
October 26, 2016 — 10:35 AM
Ken McGovern says:
Yeah Gene Wolfe is a master at crafting stories. They that take me several reads to get my head around, and I leave feeling I understand so little that is occurring. I really love all of his work and marvel at the complexity he can sustain in such simple scenes and interactions (large movements beneath the waves as if Leviathan lurks beneath the ink). I am still crawling through his treasure trove of stories and will continue to until they are exhausted.
October 26, 2016 — 2:22 PM
Peter Hentges says:
I love the horrific aspects of Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. Every time we encounter the Old Powers there are creepy critters and dark places and things sated by blood. So tasty! (Not blood, the narrative. I wouldn’t be drinking anyone’s blood. Why would you think that?)
October 26, 2016 — 10:38 AM
Denise Willson says:
“…from snoot-to-chute.” Love it, Chuck!
Genre topics scare me like a good horror. Imagine the fun marketing departments have with our work.
October 26, 2016 — 10:53 AM
Sharon Joss says:
Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is horror. And what about Dan Simmons? Song of Kali and Summer of Night are wonderfully horrific. He’s right there with McCammon in my book.
October 26, 2016 — 10:54 AM
wizardru says:
When Simmons horror is on his ‘A’ game, he’s terrifying. “Carrion Comfort” is so good and so chilling. Even his books that theoretically aren’t horror, kind of are. “Drood” is a historical novel, but it’s also pretty goddamned scary at points. Children of the Night was fun, but I felt like it was undercooked. “Hollow Man” was my only disappointment. My wife has read “The Terror” and loved it.
October 27, 2016 — 10:19 AM
harmonyfb says:
Recently, I read “Penpal” by Dathan Auerbach & really enjoyed it. No gore, just steadily-increasing-dread. And I also loved “Motherless Child” by Glen Hirschberg, and “The Lesser Dead” & “Suicide Motor Club” by Chris Buehlman (those are all three vampire stories, but so very different from one another, and all scary.)
The not-a-horror-story scary scene that has lived with me since I was 11, though, is from Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time”. There’s a scene where the protagonists travel to another world. They walk down a street lined with children identically dressed, bouncing identical balls in time with one another. One of the children is startled by them, and loses the rhythm, letting his ball roll away. His terrified mother drags him back into his house.
Later, they pass ‘re-education’ rooms, and in one of them is the child from before, bouncing a ball and screaming with each bounce because it is wired to shock him.
I had nightmares for YEARS over that scene. YEARS. I’ve always loved scary novels, but that right there struck so close to my ultimate nightmare – the loss of control, violently enforced conformity, intrusive state. :shiver: I still get echoes of that slick knot of fear in my belly when I think about it.
October 26, 2016 — 10:57 AM
Jessica Whiting says:
100% agreed on the “A Wrinkle in Time” scene. That scene has also stayed with me for decades.
October 27, 2016 — 9:55 AM
Jonathan Janz says:
This is one of the best explanations of something I’ve felt and believed for a long time. Amazing job, Chuck. You nailed it. With cockroaches pouring out of the nail hole.
October 26, 2016 — 11:00 AM
Ila Turner says:
Robert McCammon comes to mind, just about anything in his Matthew Corbett series. But its labeled as a Detective Series more often than not. You want some of the creepiest stuff to read with all the lights on, give it a go. Conversely my favorite and an annual read for me, that Mr. McCammon wrote which is labeled as horror, Boy’s Life – and I fail to see the horror in it. Go figure. I’ll buy a book with the word horror in the description faster than any other, well maybe except for true crime, you just can’t make that shit up.
October 26, 2016 — 11:01 AM
conniejjasperson says:
“Sin” by Shaun Allan
October 26, 2016 — 11:06 AM
vdouglas57 says:
You beat me, Connie!
October 26, 2016 — 11:23 AM
vdouglas57 says:
There are a number of Indie Authors who are writing good horror – Sin by Shaun Allan comes to mind.
One thing that turned me off to some shows like Criminal Minds or even Gotham is the ‘can you top this’ level of violence or gore. Neither is creepy or even horrific, it’s just messy. What’s horrific is what leads up to the violence, at least for me.
October 26, 2016 — 11:22 AM
Corey Peterson says:
I’d go with Pet Sematary as the scariest. And maybe something from Matheson, too. Hell House!!
October 26, 2016 — 11:33 AM
LostCarlson says:
Remember the Dewy Decimal system? Oh you Millennials, well anyway, whilst doing research (Ha) it must have been a sign, because every time some how the number code sent me to the Horror aisle. “Really Mr. Hammond, Fluffy ate my paper!” Cormac for sure, anyone that retreats to a monastery to write; is on a deliously different Road, thats for sure.
October 26, 2016 — 11:45 AM
E. Clark says:
I’m pretty sure that every time I see the words “Candle Cove” my eyes start bleeding. Which explains the state of my glasses. Jesus.
October 26, 2016 — 11:46 AM
Naching Kassa says:
Watchers by Dean Koontz has some truly frightening scenes.
October 26, 2016 — 12:00 PM
Berin Kinsman says:
There’s a ghetto-ization of genre all around. Some people won’t read a thing with a genre label, but will snarf up the same thing and praise it to the high hills and back if you make it sound mainstream or even literary. David Mitchell writes science fiction. So does Margaret Atwood. Kurt Vonnegut did, too. But don’t dare call those books science fiction because readers, and sometimes the authors themselves, will throw fits and deny it.
October 26, 2016 — 12:03 PM
David Wilson says:
David Mitchell wrote a horror book called Slade House. It was delicious.
October 26, 2016 — 6:55 PM
glitzy babylon (@glitzob) says:
China Mieville to the max, but he’s classified as *New Weird* of all things. Haunting theme of menace in every single novel? Check. Chimeric half-creature half-humans who are forced into that state as “punishment” in the Bas Lag novels? Check. Totalitarian regime governments that permit no half-measures, either you follow our rules or you are dead by us? YES, OKAY, CHECK.
For casual introduction, I suggest The City & The City. For the full worldbuilding atom bomb, start the Bas Lag trilogy with Perdido Street Station. Or just read all of his stuff. Better read all of his stuff.
October 26, 2016 — 12:28 PM
emily anne says:
YESSSSSSSSSS. Mieville is best, so strange and scary– he hits on so many different kinds of horror, too, which I love. You’re never sure what you’re going to get with his books, but you always know it’s going to be good.
October 28, 2016 — 11:11 AM
murgatroid98 says:
Don’t forget Dean Koontz. His book “Phantoms” gave me the creeps for a long time.
October 26, 2016 — 1:06 PM
Elly Conley says:
I think maybe it took the long sleep is because Horror is just… really non-specific. It’s like “literary,” which I guess is a section, which is stupid, because it tells us nothing about what’s between the covers. I personally sorta enjoy the fact that I might find horror in any section in the bookstore—but yes, it shouldn’t be taboo. Horror is delicious.
October 26, 2016 — 1:34 PM
Matthew X. Gomez says:
Not sure if it’s my favorite, but definitely digging WAKE of VULTURES by Lilah Bowen. Which is very horror, but dressed up as Weird West.
October 26, 2016 — 1:35 PM
Peter Andersson says:
“14” by Peter Clines! Who would have thought that the chutulu genre could be revitalized in such modern way!? I totally loved it. His side-quel “The Fold” is pretty descent too, but should have been tighter.
October 26, 2016 — 1:49 PM
Craig says:
“The Croning” by Laird Barron is one of the best new horror stories I have read.
Old school is always Lovecraft.
October 26, 2016 — 2:28 PM
Aaron Michael Ritchey says:
“Strings” by Allison M. Dickson is so disgusting and amazing you couldn’t call it anything but horror. So disgusting and imaginative.
October 26, 2016 — 2:36 PM
Thomas Kleaton says:
Excellent article. One of my favorite horror novels (and I grew up on King) I don’t see mentioned often enough is The House Next Door by Anne River Siddons.
October 26, 2016 — 2:43 PM
Raven Dane says:
Have to mention new kid on the horror block, Adam Nevill….. writer of the scariest books I have ever read. That old cliche, ‘having to sleep with the lights on’…well that came true when I read his ‘ Last Days’. The UK Literarti do not accept ‘genre’ writing. Writers like Margaret Attwood are adamant their work is not categorised as SF. Horror is beyond the pale.
October 26, 2016 — 2:56 PM
jmh says:
“Gone Girl” is probably the most popular horror book in recent years not to be labeled as such. But horror it definitely is. That ending? Yikes.
October 26, 2016 — 3:00 PM
SD Perry says:
I’ve got a haunted house book making the rounds at the moment; my agent agrees with you, there’s not much of a market. I’m a horror nerd, myself, and love all things spooky. Recently read You, by Caroline Kepnes. Top notch writing, and definitely horrific.
October 26, 2016 — 3:18 PM
mlbanner says:
I too grew up on King. His scariest to me was IT. The antagonist was an evil creepy clown, long before they became “cool.”
You might be right about the lack of physical bookshelves prominently marked as “Horror.” However, the virtual “Horror” shelves of Amazon contain a wonderfully dynamic group of best-sellers many of which are often near the top of other genre & sub-genre lists. And it might be a taboo word to agents and publishers, but they have no problem attaching the “Horror” moniker to books they sell on Amazon. Just saying.
October 26, 2016 — 3:44 PM
fydriver says:
Generally, I have avoided ‘horror’ – but given what you wrote that my issue with horror is what is now called ‘splatter punk’; descriptions of the blood and gore and violence. I have read many of the books you mention and thought of them as having ‘horrible moments’ and, in the case of Stephen King, as being ‘psychological horror’, but I don’t think of them as ‘splatterpunk’ or ‘horror’.
I have been on a Robert Crais (thriller) kick, mainlining the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. This comes after going through the John Connelly books. The later Crais books are similar to the Connelly in terms of body counts, general descriptions of death and what happens to the body – and how horrific it is (one of my favorite Crais lines, paraphrased, is how humans find the smell of decaying human bodies unlike any other dead body because we know instinctively that this is what is waiting for us all) – yet I don’t think of that as horror in a genre sense because these types of scenes are a poignant moment (or three or four).
Horror to me now is what humans can do to each other, which I think is why it ends up being parts of so many other genres. I wonder if part of why publishers no longer want to label it ‘horror’ is because that is now associated with an extreme that is more satirical than actually horrific? If we had a ‘horror’ category would it limit what we could write ( the traditional argument about ‘labeling’)? Do we actually have MORE horror, conceptually, because it’s a part of so many other genres? A really good essay, thanks for writing it and making me think about labels and concepts and how stupidly I have streamlined my own reading.
October 26, 2016 — 4:29 PM
N.E. Montgomery says:
The Charlie Parker series by John Connolly. Seriously amazing, and totally horror, although I think they’re billed as supernatural thrillersr or possibly mysteries.
There are feelings induced by those books that you’ll never escape. Even if you don’t reread them 25 times like I have. Start with Every Dead Thing, and read in order.
Ironically, I always say I don’t like horror…
October 26, 2016 — 5:15 PM
Dave Brzeski says:
John Connolly is marketed as Crime Fiction. I once attended a library talk/signing he did & looking around, I realised that most of the audience wouldn’t have come anywhere near if he’d been billed as horror. He writes Horror, OK? But since his lead character is a PI, the publisher can avoid the stigma & prejudice by calling it Crime.
Even the YA science fiction series he co-writes with his partner, Jennifer Ridyard contains scenes of pure horror.
Connolly is one of my favourite authors. Another is Phil Rickman, who also writes books that are marketed as Crime Fiction, with possibly less justification than Connolly. His series character, Merrily Watkins, is a single mother, Church of England vicar who is also an excorcist.
October 27, 2016 — 6:08 AM
Lisa Kovanda says:
The movie, “Black Swan,” won Oscars, and deservedly so, but it’s without a doubt a horror film.
October 26, 2016 — 5:54 PM
David Wilson says:
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is definitely a horror novel, completely with scary moth-things that eat your dreams.
October 26, 2016 — 6:29 PM
Nick says:
Charles Stross'[b] [i}Laundry Files[/i][/b] series definitely count as horror – with spy thriller overtones crossed with various episodes of The Office (existential horror). His much less accessible but seriously excellent ‘Glass House’ would qualify also, for very different reasons.
China Mieville’s[b][i] Kraken [/i][/b]is another horror novel masquerading as SF/Urban Fantasy/Weird. His New Crobuzon series was pretty horrific (in a very good way) also – [b][i]Perdido Street Station[/i][/b] involves a darkly surreal analogue to Victorian London being terrorized by huge moths that feed on souls – it has been one of my all time favourite novels for a long time now..
October 26, 2016 — 7:03 PM
tracikenworth says:
Mine by Robert McCammon. I was pregnant while reading this and oh, geesh, the idea of someone taking my baby. I would HUNT them down, same as the heroine did!!
October 26, 2016 — 8:07 PM
Sue Stewart says:
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House. The Lottery. The “hand holding” scene in Hill House still keeps my hands under the covers DECADES after I first read it!
October 26, 2016 — 9:16 PM
Jessica Whiting says:
I remember reading “The Lottery” in school. Is it still required reading? It is incredibly horrific, that first realization of what the lottery really is….It has stayed with me always.
October 27, 2016 — 10:00 AM
Anel Patricia says:
The Strain books by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan
October 26, 2016 — 9:31 PM
Alejandro De La Garza says:
“The Exorcist” and “The Shining” are two of my favorite books and two of my favorite movies. I also love “Interview with the Vampire,” but I hate the film version. I believe many people like the horror genre because it assures them there’s always something scarier in the world besides their own lives. But we also keep deferring to it because we want to be certain nothing can terrify us in the same way as when we were children; that we’re adults now and can handle anything that comes our way. Fear is a primal instinct, along with hunger and joy. We can never get away from any of them. Or at least no sane person can.
October 26, 2016 — 10:42 PM
Delia says:
Very well said, Chuck. I’d love to find the Horror label on shelves in the book stores. I’ll probably be there for hours. Hell, maybe I’ll bring a tent and camp there for a few days. Now I have to hunt for my horror and dig it out from the Mystery and Thriller and Fantasy section, not to mention the Classics.
Some of my favorite horror books include The Shining, House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill (I learned a lot about taxidermy – fascinating stuff), Blood Meridian (so much violence but written in such a compelling way), The Ruins by Scott Smith, The Rats, Drood…
October 26, 2016 — 11:24 PM